2016 Central Illinois Regional

Rockford Robotics competed in the Central Illinois Regional March 18 -19, 2016. Though we struggled during initial rounds, the team rallied to address robot issues. Students made enough improvements that we won three of our last four matches. By the end of the competition, we were successful in showing off our robot’s capability to breach several defenses and shoot in both the low and high goal. Robot improvements included:

Added arm to lift the portcullis and lower the Chival de fris

Fixed electrical connections that were causing loss of battery power

Replaced shooter motors to reduce shot time from 6 seconds to 1 second

Added a climbing mechanism

While our team was not chosen to participate in the elimination rounds, this disappointment had its benefit. We were able to get an extra five uninterrupted hours working on the robot, which will put us in a much better position for the next competition. We were able to move and trim the arm to pass inspection, deploy and test autonomous operation, fix the shooter controls, collect camera data, and remove arms for further testing. While there is still lots of work to do in the next two weeks, the team is ready for the challenge.